Home Lab

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Just curious if anyone else has built a home lab to experiment and work with? How did you decide what was going to be included? Did you just mount your equipment on drywall, plywood, or an actual backplane? Anyone have pictures.

I want to build one to learn on. I want it to include the following:

actual 30 X 30 backplane

PLC with Ethernet coms.

HMI

Small VFD and or stepper motor

Maybe a remote rack as well

Remote access cabability

And what ever else I can fit on my back plane. I already have various sensors to use.

I also have a ScadaPack32, OMRON CQM1 (no software though), and a Direct Logix PLC. I also have a couple SEIMENS LOGOès but again no software.(I could program them from the onboard screen)

I really want Rockwell hardware but the software is just to expensive!

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If you want to use Rockwell hardware, look at the MicroLogix 1100. It supports Ethernet/IP comms and uses the free version of RSLogix 500. They also have their Micro 800 series processors that use the free CCW software, but I'm not a fan of those and I'm not sure how much you can do over Ethernet with them. The ML1100 can be programmed and can talk to HMIs over Ethernet but can't control remote IO.